Why it works: Apple and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓
Canning Fruit Without Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrups
For very thin syrup, mix 1 cup sugar with 1 cup water and bring to a boil.
For thin syrup, mix 1½ cups sugar with 1 cup water and bring to a boil.
For medium thin syrup, mix 1⅓ cups sugar with 1 cup water and boil for 2-3 minutes until syrupy.
For medium thick syrup, mix 1⅔ cups sugar with 1 cup water and boil for 5 minutes.
For thick syrup, mix 1½ cups sugar with 1 cup water and boil for 8-12 minutes until it forms a soft ball in water.
Prepare and pack the fruit
For apples, peel, core, blanch, and cold-dip them.
Pack the apples in jars and add syrup.
For cherries, stone them and layer them with sugar (½ lb. for sour cherries, 1⅓ lb. for sweet cherries) in a kettle.
Let the cherries sit for 1-2 hours, then heat to boiling, skim, and can in sterilized jars.
For pears, peel and cut into halves or desired shapes.
Pears can also be canned whole with stems.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Apple + peartop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together649 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
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Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,842 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Syrup + peartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together254 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, in the syrup, sets how thin or thick the liquid is.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that surrounds and covers the fruit.
- Apples
- Main fruit packed in jars and preserved in syrup after blanching and cold-dipping.
- Cherries
- Main fruit layered with sugar to draw out juice before being heated and canned.
- Pears
- Main fruit peeled and cut or canned whole, then covered with syrup.
The step that matters
Boiling the thick syrup to the soft-ball stage. Sugar concentration rises as water boils off, so boiling time controls syrup thickness. Stopping too early leaves the syrup thin and watery, while boiling too long makes it overly concentrated.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup, pear):
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits about as well
- Applethe original
- Peachfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, pear. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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